House of David's baseball history has everything from Babe Ruth to attempts at breaking the color barrier

One thing was certain when the House of David baseball team came to town: It was going to get hairy.

From about 1917 until 1955, the long-haired, bearded baseball barnstormers from the House of David commune in Benton Harbor traveled the country beating just about anyone who would play them.

The team members’ mission was two-fold: Spread the word about their colony, and also send some money back home to the colony. Along the way, the club won a few baseball games, maybe as many of 70 percent of its games, against town teams, semi-pro teams and even the occasional major league team in an exhibition game.

Today, the memory and many of the artifacts of the House of David baseball franchise are preserved at the House of David Museum in Addison.

Preserving that history has been an almost 30-year obsession for museum curator Chris Siriano, who completed the transfer of his mammoth House of David collection from Benton Harbor to Addison this summer.

“Whether they were playing a major-league team or a town team in Podunk, Iowa, the biggest crowds in the history of those towns would show up to see this team play,” Siriano said. “They were good players, but they couldn’t play in the majors because they wouldn’t shave or cut their hair.

“They weren’t going to shave because it was part of their faith.”

The team was not entirely made up of members of the commune, Siriano points out. Joining the colony or accepting their religion was not necessarily a prerequisite for joining the baseball team.

“If they came to your town, and your pitcher beat them, or if you had a really good player, they might offer that player a contract to join them in the next town,” Siriano said. “They could afford to pay several times what the players were earning on their town teams.

“But if you played for the House of David, you couldn’t shave or cut your hair until after you picked up your last paycheck.”

The team attracted the attention of former major leaguers. Babe Ruth was offered a contract to play toward the end of his New York Yankees career, and Hall of Fame pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander served as a player-manager of one of the House of David traveling teams from 1931-35. Alexander was easy to spot. He was the one without the beard.

“He said that whiskers made him itch,” Siriano said.

Siriano’s museum in Addison houses many of the old uniforms worn by the House of David players. There also are hundreds of pictures, artifacts and newspaper stories that tell of those players who spread the faith of House of David on the ball diamond.

It’s an impressive array of baseball memorabilia that Siriano has collected since the mid-1980s. So much so, in fact, that an ESPN magazine story in 2007 named Siriano’s museum, which was then housed in Benton Harbor, among the top baseball museums.

The magazine ranked the House of David Museum behind just the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., and the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Ontario, Canada.

The museum also is chronicled in a bucket-list baseball book titled, “101 Baseball Places to See Before You Strike Out.” The museum came in at No. 63.

Baseball is just part of the story of the House of David.

“People around the world are fascinated by it, and the media around the world for 100 years has written about it,” Siriano said. “It’s just a crazy, twisted story.

“It’s a crazy form of Christianity that started in America.”

The House of David ball teams that barnstormed the country were more than just ballplayers and strange-looking evangelists. They knew how to make a buck.

They understood that lights could extend their game day and add to the spectacle. Their first night game was played April 17, 1930, in Florence, Kan. That was a full five years before the first Major League Baseball game was played under the lights in Cincinnati.

The House of David traveling teams were known to align themselves with another group considered outcasts by many people in America. They frequently invited Negro League squads to travel with them from town to town.

It was the House of David’s version of breaking the color barrier.

“The House of David team would travel in one bus, and a Negro League team, maybe the Kansas City Monarchs with Satchel Paige, would be in a second bus,” Siriano said. “The Negro League team would then wait outside of town until they heard it was OK.

“Members of the House of David would tell the promoters that not only was their town team going to play the Negro League team at 11 and we’ll play you at 4, but after the games, they’re going to eat in the restaurant with us and then stay in the same hotel as us.”

Siriano said that deal backed many promoters into a corner. After all, there might be 10,000 people at a ballpark anxious to see the House of David squad play.

“The organizers knew that they’d have a riot on their hands if they said no to those conditions and turned the House of David team away,” he said.

Famous House of David ballplayers included Babe Didrikson, who is recognized as one of the greatest female athletes of all time.

“She wouldn’t ride on the bus with the players,” Siriano said. “And there was a pretty good reason for that. The team would play two or sometimes three games a day in heavy wool uniforms, and it might be a few days between showers.”

Much of the story of the House of David and the way the group used baseball to spread the word of their colony and faith is chronicled in a book Siriano completed in 2007. The colony is also featured in a documentary titled, “A Compelling Curiosity,” and a movie about the colony has been discussed.

“They were really good at going around the world and figuring out who was worried about dying, and somehow they were able to get across to these people that, ‘Hey, you can’t take it with you,’ ” Siriano said. “ ‘Give us everything you own, come to Benton Harbor, and we’ll teach you to live forever.’